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RURAL CALEDONIA, Minn. — Dec. 3, 2006, 7:37 p.m: “Dear Mr. Lidstrom. My mother informed me that you wanted to contact me. I am curious to know as to what you might want to say.”
Dec. 4, 12:06 a.m.: “Dear Hilari, I appreciate the terseness of your response. ... It is much too late to establish any meaningful dialog between us, but here I am writing these words.”
For 35 years, Joel Lidstrom had crossed Hilari Anderson’s mind nearly every day, a distant figure in the shadows of her imagination, a character she wanted to erase but couldn’t. He was, after all, her father.
She figured he looked like Jesus — her mother had described him as having long hair. But her image of him was anything but Christ-like.
“I viewed Joel as someone who made a conscious choice not to be a part of my life,” she said. “When I was younger, I used to fantasize that he needed a kidney — and I wouldn’t give it to him.”
She, on the other hand, rarely entered his thoughts. “She was out of sight and out of mind,” he said. “She wasn’t on my radar.”
Dec. 4, 7:07 p.m.: “Joel, It seems to me to be a great risk to share my life with you. ... There is no way to know at this point where this interaction may lead. ...
I am a high school English and journalism teacher who lives in Seattle and works in the suburbs. I have been married for five years to a man I’ve known for 15. We have a dog and two cats. I like the dog better than the cats, but I try not to let the cats in on that.”
Dec. 4, 10:46 p.m.: “(Hilari), My wife of twenty-six years agrees with me: you do write like me. It is amazing ... I am a musician, a piano restorer, a husband, a table-tennis player, a father, a self-taught computer programmer, a coffee and wine aficionado, still a son to very elderly parents. ... I, too, have a dog and two cats. I love them with equanimity.”
A brief encounter, an absent dad
Late 1970: Lidstrom was 18 years old and a guitarist in a short-lived rock band, Santa Fe, in Moorhead, Minn. He met a young woman from the West Coast. She moved into the band’s house. She told him she was 18. They got romantically involved.
Months later, he discovered she actually was 16.
“It hit me hard,” he said. “I said, ‘What in the hell are you doing here? Why aren’t you with your parents in Spokane (Wash.)? You haven’t even finished high school.’”
March 1971: He took her to a bus station in his hometown of Detroit Lakes, Minn., on a snowy day and bid her farewell as she returned to Spokane.
“She left tearfully,” he said. “I left empty and numb.”
Three weeks later: He took a phone call from her in his parents’ basement. Her message: “I’m pregnant.”
“There was a lot of silence,” he said.
Nov. 20, 1971: Hilari was born. Lidstrom wasn’t present for the birth, but he did help pay for it, with earnings from a job he got at a grease gun factory in Minneapolis.
November 1972: Lidstrom was drafted into the Vietnam War and stationed in Germany. There, he honed an innate talent in— and lifelong passion for — pingpong. And his life changed forever.
“I emerged from the Army a different person,” he said. “It’s almost as if Hilari’s mother was from a previous life, a former time.”
For the next 35 years, he was “an absent dad” to Hilari. He and his wife, Liz Wanschura, built their own family: daughters Zoë, 17, and Amelia, 14; and son Kai, 10. And he built his own business restoring pianos.
Fathers and daughters
Am I attractive? Am I intelligent? Am I competent? These are questions that continually repeat themselves in the conscious and unconscious minds of middle school and high school girls, said Tom Roberts, psychotherapist and owner of Innerchange Counseling in Onalaska, Wis.
For answers and validation, he said, they look to their fathers.
“Dad is the first person they check it out with,” he said. “Fathers are important to daughters in ways far different than they’re important to sons.”
For girls who grow up without fathers, “that leaves a big hole,” he said, “and raises questions about (the daughter’s) own abilities.”
But Hilari Anderson was somewhat different. Her childhood was very difficult, and not just because of Lidstrom’s absence.
Her mother got married twice to bad-news men before eventually marrying a standup, loving man when Hilari was 18. The first two brought alcoholism and domestic abuse to Anderson’s already complicated childhood.
“Joel as an abstraction seemed less important than what was going on in my home (at the time),” she said. Nonetheless, she still thought of him daily, she said, sometimes with anger, sometimes with ambivalence.
She grew up alongside her mother, she said, and knew from an early age her mother’s struggles wouldn’t be her own. Her mother taught her to read at age 4, becoming her first teacher in a distinguished academic career that included honors courses throughout elementary and high school. She then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and became a successful teacher.
“It makes me wonder whether I was predisposed to have this sense of self-worth,” she said. “There was never any question in my mind whether I’d be an educated, successful person.”
Her conviction partly came from her mother, who “loves me more than anyone,” she said. It wasn’t until she was 35 that she learned there was another piece — at least biologically — to explain her sense of self.
Torrid exchange
Lidstrom loves pingpong. He plays whenever he can, and said he’ll still be playing “with one foot in the grave.” He once beat Jack Howard, coach of the U.S. team that traveled to Communist China for some pingpong diplomacy in 1971. At his level, the game is a violent, furious volley, the ball whizzing inches over the net, back and forth, back and forth at a torrid pace.
Torrid, too, was the pace of the e-mail exchanges batted back and forth between father and daughter. They sent photos. They swapped stories about home-improvement projects they’ll get to in an unnamed decade in the future. They filled in 35 years’ worth of gaps in life stories. And they worried.
Dec. 6, 7:06 p.m.: “(Joel), The more I write, the more nervous I become. I fear I will run out of anything meaningful to say.”
Dec. 6, 10:54 p.m.: “(Hilari), It is precisely this that I discussed with Liz today. In these first few conversations, all things between us are new. That will quickly change. What will remain will be us, and what we are. Relationships may be founded on great and mysterious things, but they are sustained by simple things, and common interaction.”
Early in February, they reached 1,000 e-mails between them. Lidstrom’s wife, Liz, noted the ease and speed
e-mail provides.
“With letters, there’s this gap of days and days, where you’re left wondering, ‘Hmmm, I wonder what the person thought of what I wrote?’ ” she said. “With e-mail, you know instantly.”
Dec. 7, 1:29 a.m.: “(Joel), I have corresponded with you for a few short days, and yet my world has changed.”
Dec. 10, 6:57 p.m.: “(Hilari), ... It is a very wondrous thing that, after all these years, this father has the opportunity to dance with his daughter.”
Dec. 10, 10:02 p.m.: “(Joel), (Your words) have sent me weeping. ... I am shedding old hurts and looking forward to a new future.”
And then, finally, this exchange:
Dec. 16, 5:54 p.m.: “(Joel), It does seem as if we should meet. I’m just going to put it out there that I could probably fly to Minnesota during my February break.”
Dec. 16, 7:31 p.m.: “(Hilari), Yes! come visit. ... It’s a daunting prospect. How much easier is it for fathers to meet daughters — and daughters to meet fathers — in the delivery room?”
‘Who’s my daddy?’
“Trepidatious as hell.”
That’s how Lidstrom described his feelings Feb. 17 while at baggage claim of the Minneapolis airport, awaiting his daughter’s arrival.
She’d sent pictures and some videos, so he had a good idea what she looked and sounded like, at least onscreen. His appearance was more of a mystery to her. He had sent just a few photos, and they had never spoken.
“I told him I’d hold a sign that read, ‘Who’s my daddy?’” she joked.
She got off the plane, focusing on every step. She crossed through the double doors into baggage claim.
“Then I saw this very tall man walking toward me with this huge grin,” she said. “He was shaking. I didn’t know if I was laughing or crying. I was shell-shocked. I looked at him and said, ‘I need to sit down.’”
They sat together for an hour, as her luggage did laps around the baggage-claim carousel.
She was initially “overwhelmed” by his physical presence and voice. But she soon grew accustomed to him, and he to her.
“It was never clumsy or difficult,” he said. “It flowed very nicely.”
They had some fun with the young desk clerk at their hotel, introducing each other as father and daughter — saying this is the first time they’ve met.
“He didn’t know what to do with that,” she said. “He was flummoxed.”
The first night, they stayed up until 4 in the morning, talking nonstop. They spent two days in the Twin Cities, eating long lunches, sipping wine and meeting some of Lidstrom’s many friends from his days as an undergraduate student in guitar at the University of Minnesota.
Then, they headed south to Lidstrom’s farmstead to meet his family.
Anderson had corresponded with her stepmother and half-sisters, but this would be their first meeting.
“I was really worried about Zoë and Amelia having this older sister they had just found out about,” she said.
She walked through the door. Amelia approached her, arms open wide for a hug. “Hi-i-i-i!” she said.
“God, you look like (Lidstrom’s mother) Pearl,” Liz remarked.
Conversations between father and daughter that began online continued and intensified in person. The humor between them grew more frequent. And the bond between them is different than it is with other adult friends.
“He had always existed for me all these many years,” she said, “but not in any embodiment. It was all so abstract, and the realization finally of who he is was so powerful.”
“Despite 35 years of not thinking or caring about her, suddenly I was faced with my daughter,” he said. “Suddenly it becomes very meaningful. It’s radically, vastly different than just meeting someone, because this context of father-daughter is a very, very profound one.”
Hilari returned for another 10-day visit this month. But she reminded her father the planes go both ways.
“If he wants to see me again, he’ll come to Seattle,” she said. He’s already making plans for a family trip there this summer, he said.
Feb. 23, 2007, 2 a.m. (Hilari’s last night in Minnesota during their first meeting):
“Joel, my father,
“We mentioned tonight that we have not wept much this past seven days. I have reflected on this several times over the last few days. I determined that there was little room for weeping when I felt such tremendous joy. But do not be fooled. I weep now. I weep.
“Saying goodbye to you, or contemplating it, is devastating. I have just found you, have recently held you, and now I must let you go. I will miss you in a way I can’t articulate in this letter, but I don’t need to. You know. You know already. ... I dread this morning, the morning of our goodbye. I will count the minutes until our next hello.”
Feb. 23, 2007, 1:30 p.m. (after Hilari took a flight back to Seattle):
“Hilari, my daughter,
I read your letter in the parking lot, weeping gently at first, but sobbing uncontrollably before I was half way. ... I re-read your letter, vacillating between joy having received a written expression of your love, and bereavement at having relinquished your voice, your hands, your arms, your breath.
“You are right in knowing that, though all what you said was beautiful and what I longed to hear, it was not necessary: I knew it all before you wrote it. I knew it all before you even thought it, so palpable is our love for each other.
“Where do we go from here? I don’t know, Hilari, but I am bursting with joy and love and thankfulness. I have finally found you, my beautiful daughter, and no words I can assemble can convey how you have moved me except that I simply say ... I love you.”
Questions to answer before meeting a parent for the first time
The Internet makes it easier than ever for children to find and contact birth parents. Here are some questions from psychotherapist Tom Roberts to consider leading up to the meeting:
Am I prepared for my response? Long-held feelings of abandonment and resentment can boil over upon meeting an absent parent. In order to avoid that response, sons or daughters are advised to go into the meeting ready to start over, trying as much as possible to judge the parent from then on, rather than pent-up feelings about the parent’s role in the past.
Am I prepared for my parent’s response? Sons or daughters can’t control what the parent will tell them, or how the parent will respond to the meeting. The meeting is likely to stir up strong emotions in both people.
Am I ready to be completely honest and accept my parent’s honesty? The parent needs to be as honest as possible about the reasons that led to leaving. “Don’t pull any punches or try to smooth things over,” Roberts said. Sons or daughters may not like what they hear, but it’s the only way to start the reconciliation process. They need to be honest about their feelings about the absent parent, as well.
Am I ready to be surprised? It can be very bad (the parent simply wanted nothing to do with the child) or very good (the parent loved the child dearly but the other parent denied access). The truth could be far different than the child has been led to believe.
Dan Simmons can be reached at (608) 791-8217 or dsimmons@lacrossetribune.com.
To read some of the e-mail correspondence between Joel Lidstrom and Hilari Anderson, click here.
